


i'll give you shelter as you've done for me

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Platonic and Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 18:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9002470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: Porter hasn't gotten many marks that aren't his family's. He's perfectly okay with that. (EDM Secret Santa gift for pashacheckcv!)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Merry christmas dude!!! i hope you like it :) 
> 
> enjoy!! xoxo

Anton has a million soulmarks and none of them are Porter’s.

Family soulmarks - a set of knots. Celtic ones in rich jewel tones, big and interlocking and indistinguishable to everyone but Anton. His parents on either shoulder blade and then his brothers descending his spine. There are others, of course. A spiral up his arm that he’s pretty sure is Dillon, bright reds and pinks and vivid greens. Others, ones Anton tells the stories of frequently, smaller childhood marks, an abstract black doodle on his shoulder that when Porter had gotten tipsy enough to ask about had just made Anton smile sadly.

He loves like the weather, easy and changeable. There aren’t many marks near his heart and Porter takes some obscure pleasure in that.

Marks nearer the heart are more serious, usually _romantic_. Anton is very far from serious.

Porter’s own back is a set of climbing vines, flowers for his parents and his brothers. Vibrant and lovely. 

He doesn’t have many others. He doesn’t like the idea of handing some of his body over to someone in a way he’ll never get it back. He doesn’t like the idea of having someone he doesn’t love anymore with him forever.

And he’s terrified of a mark on him so much larger than his on them. 

Anton had offered him a handshake when they’d first met and then when Porter had refused it he’d never offered again. He doesn’t touch Porter and Porter’s glad of that. He knows what would happen if they did touch now. He doesn’t know what Anton’s mark on him would look like but he does know where it would be.

There’s a lot of white space over Porter’s heart. He thinks Anton would take up a lot of it.

\--

It’s been years. It’s been a _lot_ of years.

It’s a little unfair, Porter thinks when he’s in airplanes thousands of feet above the ground – a safe enough distance to let himself think about things like this. Unfair that he still cares so much and feels it so acutely. He’d hoped it would fade, or at least the desperate want to reach out for Anton’s mark would die a little.

He turns to look out the window. The ocean spreads out glittering and dark beneath them. They’re flying over the Atlantic; he’s going to see Hugo. They’ve got a song they’re tossing around and it’s good, it’s got potential, it could be everything and it’s hard to swallow down the excitement in Porter’s chest when he thinks about it. It feels like Worlds had, in some ways.

He’s got Hugo’s mark, a feather wrapped around his shoulder. A little closer to his heart than Porter wants it to be but he’d been so _happy_ when they’d first met. So happy and he’d gone for the hug and their cheeks had brushed and the skin on skin was all it ever took.

He’d never touched Hugo again. It’s too late but at this point it’s just a habit. No touching, no contact. Nothing. Not for anyone. 

He closes his eyes.

\--

Hugo greets him with a clap on the shoulder, careful to touch only where Porter’s sleeve covers skin. A courtesy. Porter smiles at him blearily, follows him out of the airport with docile exhaustion. Hugo’s chattering something more French than English and it’s comforting and familiar and on the ride to Nantes Porter lets his head rest on Hugo’s shoulder.

They’re both wearing jackets. It’s safe. 

He thinks of Anton only once, when the light of a streetlight passes over the tiny mark on his wrist that’d been Nicole.

\--

Hugo’s family is spread over his back and shoulders in a magnificent pair of wings.

They’re jeweled and faceted and seem to reflect light, magenta and green and deep blue. The inspiration for Adventure, Hugo had told him one tipsy night. Porter catches himself staring every time Hugo strips his shirt, which is often. Hugo is shameless - it’s extraordinarily French. 

Hugo has fewer marks than Anton but more than Porter, not that it’s difficult. Porter tries not to think about what they all mean, who the graceful bird on his hip is, whose flowers are curling over his collarbone. He knows his own vines are growing up Hugo’s ribcage. 

The right side. Not the left. Not the heart.

\--

The studio has never been so easy.

Hugo hands over a page of lyrics the third day like it’s nothing, scribbled on lined paper and torn from a notebook. It’s still got the jagged edge and Porter scans it and then spends the next ten hours bent over it. 

Tiny corrections. Tempo, pacing. He tries not to think about the lyrics until that night when he’s tucked into his blankets and he has to press his fingers to his cheeks because the smile is starting to hurt. 

“ _Shelter_ ,” he whispers to himself.

\--

When he hands the lyrics back Hugo reads them over and starts to smile.

“You didn’t change anything,” he comments. It’s not entirely correct but Porter understands what he’s trying to say. He shrugs uncomfortably. 

“It was all true,” he says and Hugo doesn’t respond but he’s still smiling. It’s soft and it doesn’t fade, not for the rest of the day. Porter watches it out of the corner of his eye.

\--

It happens very simply.

Studio work can make it hard to avoid contact. Dials and tiny monitors and so much pointing and arguing. Shoulders brushing, hands reaching for the same slider. 

They’re arguing about the background vocals, about how hidden Porter’s voice is. Hugo wants it to sound more like Porter and Porter can’t understand why he’d want that when it sounds so good the way he’d recorded it. 

Hugo’s hand brushes his and it’s such a simple thing that for a moment Porter’s still talking, still pressing his point about the backing vocals. It’s only Hugo, suddenly so frozen, that alerts him. 

He freezes too, the motion replaying to him, the momentary warmth of Hugo’s skin on his. 

It’d felt so natural. 

Porter runs. 

It’s flat sprinting and he clips a wall, bounces around the corner and rattles through the bathroom door and locks it behind him. Hugo’s calling after him somewhere far away but Porter can barely hear it over the rush in his ears. 

His shirt gets caught on his nose and tugs on his hair and he throws it aside. Stops and stares at the wall for a long moment because he knows what he’ll see when he looks in the mirror. He knows. He’s always known. He always, always knew. 

He turns and then has to clutch the sink basin to stop himself from going to his knees. 

There are feathers falling over his skin. 

So many of them, broad and jeweled, magenta and green and deep blue. The largest is still the one wrapped over his shoulder but now they fall down his side and over his chest. Beautiful, he thinks dully. They look beautiful on him. 

And they’re right over his heart. 

He thinks about his own vines on Hugo’s ribs. Thinks about how they might have grown a little. Thinks about how they’re opposite Hugo’s heart but still on his chest and how Porter’s always been so close to love, so close to it and yet so, so immeasurably far. 

He presses a hand to warm skin and closes his eyes and if the hurt beating drumlike in his chest spills over and he cries a little there’s no one to see it at all.

\--

“So, I love you,” Porter says when he emerges from the bathroom. His tone is matter of fact. He’d fought to make it that way.

Hugo scrambles up from where he’d been sitting, on the floor in the hallway directly across from the bathroom door. 

He’s pale. Rumpled like he’s been running his hands through his hair the whole time. His eyes are red-rimmed and the pain that bolts through Porter’s chest at the thought that he’d hurt Hugo is only a little less than the shell-shocked hurt of the soulmark. 

“Porter,” Hugo says and reaches out. 

Porter flinches away instinctively. It’s not Hugo - it’s honestly _not_ , the damage is done now and anyway he knows Hugo will be kind about this as he is in all things - it’s just instinct. He’s never been good with contact, even with those whose marks he’s already wearing. 

“You know I won’t tell anyone,” Porter says and hauls in a breath that hurts. “Just. Let’s not talk about it.” 

“Porter,” Hugo snaps and Porter flinches again. Hugo’s voice is soft but the force behind it is anything but and he feels so fragile. Feels like he’s barely keeping himself together. 

Hugo’s shirt hits him in the face. 

Porter hauls it off his head and meets Hugo’s defiant gaze and for a long time he doesn’t really understand what Hugo’s trying to show him. The vines are still there and yeah, they’re bigger, have grown to curl over Hugo’s collarbone. They’re flowering, too, tiny clusters of blue and soft pink that almost glow against the dark leaves. He thinks abstractly that they might be morning glories and he wonders why Hugo’s showing him this. 

“I don’t,” he says and then Hugo’s grabbing his hand, laying it on his chest over the flowers, picked out so vibrant and realistic on his skin. It’s warm, Porter can feel the heartbeat pounding under his palm, and he opens his mouth to repeat his question-

A heartbeat. 

The noise that escapes his mouth isn’t human. Doesn’t sound like words at all. It’s an animal cry and he isn’t sure it’s joy because what’s moving in his chest isn’t soft enough to be joy. 

The vines had switched sides cleanly. Grown up Hugo’s ribs, over his heart. Flowered over his chest and he looks so natural with Porter’s flowers on him, Porter can’t breathe. He’s never seen his own flowers. They’re beautiful. So, so beautiful. 

“Mon âme sœur,” Hugo whispers. 

Porter doesn’t understand the French but he understands Hugo’s tone and he lets Hugo reel him in, tilts his head up for Hugo’s mouth. They’re pressed together, chest to chest, so much skin and Porter’s dizzy with it. 

“Je t’aime,” Hugo breathes before he kisses him.

\--

The tour happens in a whirlwind and Porter’s so breathlessly, impossibly happy.

The song is _perfect_ and it means everything it had before and even more now. A declaration. It’s hardly subtle but Porter doesn’t care. He’s happy it’s so obvious. They’re not secret - it’s hard to keep marks so big and tellingly placed secret, especially on tour - but no one seems to care or even notice and that’s fine with him. 

He’s happy. He has Hugo, Hugo that loves him so much it’s overflowing his chest and spilling over his skin. 

He thumbs at Nicole’s mark. Thinks of Anton. Thinks of Celtic knots picked out on his own skin in jewel tones, red and blue and green. The thoughts are easier to ignore now than they ever have been and Porter’s happy.

\--

_I’m coming out to the LA show!_ Anton texts him and Porter goes to his bunk and pulls his blanket over his head and stares at the text until his screen turns off, until his eyes burn and he has to blink. They’re watering, saline trickling down his cheek into his pillow.

A hand lands on his thigh and he jolts. 

“Hello,” Hugo murmurs and Porter lets him twitch the blanket aside. Hugo’s smiling, Porter sees, but when he registers Porter’s expression it fades rapidly into concern. 

“Hi,” Porter says when Hugo doesn’t go on. 

“Move over,” Hugo commands and shoves busily at Porter until he does, and then climbs in after him. There’s barely enough room in the bunks but they’ve done this before and it feels kind of good, pressed between the wall and Hugo’s warm body. It feels safe. 

Hugo’s arm comes around his waist and he goes easily, presses his face into Hugo’s chest. Long fingers find his hair, comb haphazardly through it.

“What is it, minou?” Hugo asks softly and Porter barely finds it in himself to huff in displeasure at the nickname. 

“I’m in love with Anton,” he says and waits. 

Hugo pauses for a long moment. He considers things, Porter knows. Thinks about them before doing or saying anything. He’s deliberate and usually it’s good, helps balance Porter’s emotions out, but it’s leaving him cold with anticipation now. 

“For how long?” Hugo asks at last. His arm is still warm around Porters waist, his hand in Porter’s hair. It soothes some of the awful thing churning in Porter’s chest. 

“Like,” he says. His voice is breathless and cracked. “Years. Since Poseidon, maybe.” 

Hugo hums again. He still hasn’t let go of Porter and it’s pushing something almost like hope up through Porter’s chest. It feels awful. He wishes it weren’t there at all because it’s so easy to be disappointed by hope. 

“Alright,” he says at last. Porter almost flinches. 

He’d been expecting… something else. 

“Alright?” he asks softly. Disbelieving. 

Hugo hums and dips to press soft lips to Porter’s forehead.

\--

The show is fantastic.

Someone tells him Dillon is coming, someone mentions Sonny. Someone tries to tell him Anton’s there and he snaps that he _knows_ and then he feels bad but Hugo’s already shuffling him away. An arm thrown over his shoulders, palm pressed almost as if by accident over his mark. 

Porter feels better. Calmer. 

He loves Hugo so much. 

“I love you,” he breathes in Hugo’s ear before they climb onstage. Hugo smiles at him, squinty-eyed, so bright. 

He doesn’t see Anton in the crowd. He doesn’t see anyone, unfocuses his eyes from everyone but Hugo. The crowd’s a sea and it’s beating against the stage and it’s powerful, they’re powerful. 

He wonders if Anton can see that. If Anton knows how much has changed. 

If he even cares.

\--

They stumble offstage a sweaty mess and Dillon and Sonny are waiting for them.

Dillon’s been a mess of marks since Porter had first met him, interlocking swirls and animals, faces, paintbrushes and flowers and abstract spiky shapes meshing chaotically. There’s hardly any room on his skin, barely an inch. He’s proud with it, tells the stories he remembers often and laughs away the ones he doesn’t. 

Anton’s there, and Hugo, and Wes, and Joel and Sonny, his parents on his back. The skin around his heart is clearer than the rest of him but it’s still scattered with marks. There’s space for more but not much of it. 

Nothing like Porter, but Dillon’s respectful. Asked before reaching out to touch the first time, and when Porter had spat an instinctive no he’d just smiled and kept talking. 

He’s backstage, laughing, hauling Sonny around. Sonny’s protesting, happily upset, wrist in Dillon’s bare hand. Porter watches it and wonders what it must be like to trust so easily or to care so little. 

Hugo’s hand finds his. Porter clings, twines their fingers and waits for the soft ache in his chest to diffuse. It’s an old ache, inspired by nothing these days. The old hurt of loneliness, isolation. Worth it, he’d thought. He doesn’t regret it but he recognizes how happy he is now, how happy he hadn’t been before. 

Dillon sees them and his eyes are wide for the tiniest moment before he’s grinning, bouncing over. 

“Still no?” he asks and Porter blinks at him for a long moment. 

“No,” he croaks and Dillon nods, spins away to kiss Hugo’s cheek. The feather - pink and blue and deep green - doesn’t move from high on his inner arm. 

Porter looks away and that’s how he sees Anton. 

He’s watching them and his eyes are on Porter’s hand in Hugo’s and for a moment Porter is seeing him when he doesn’t know he’s being seen. It’s hard to parse, difficult to say what his expression is doing for a moment. It’s tight. Anything but pleasant. 

Porter hauls in a breath and Dillon turns, spies Anton and the laughter that spills from him is nervous. 

“I’m gonna go say hi to Preston,” he says and then he’s gone, Sonny following him only a little slower. 

Hugo hums when he turns to see Anton and Porter wonders, dizzy and numb, what that means. He hasn’t let go of Porter’s hand. 

“Anton,” he calls and Anton smiles and comes over. It’s so natural that Porter wonders if the tight expression he’d seen before was even real. 

“Hello,” he says brightly. 

He’s beautiful. Porter hasn’t seen him in so long, has possibly been avoiding him. Pictures don’t do him justice, capture his static appeal but not how soft he looks now. Golden and kind. He’s grown into himself and it makes Porter’s chest ache. 

He wants to lift his hand to his heart, press his fingers into his skin and feel his heartbeat thundering. He forces himself not to. 

“Excellent show,” Anton comments and the words are probably sincere but they fall flat in the silence. Porter shakes himself, tightens his grip on Hugo’s hand. 

“Thanks,” he says when Hugo stays quiet. Everything is strange and it’s a little terrifying, how Hugo won’t say anything. How Anton’s watching them with a smile that doesn’t seem real. Nothing feels right and he hauls in another breath. Peeks sidelong at Hugo. 

He’s staring at Anton and it’s a measuring look. It’s almost coldly calculating except for the beat of humor, the flash of pleased mischief. 

“Let’s see, then,” Hugo says and his tone is musical with laughter and Porter isn’t prepared at all for the way he reaches out to cup Anton’s cheek and pull him forward for a kiss. 

It’s brief, probably chaste. Porter can’t look away until Hugo lets go and Anton rocks back on his heels. He’s staring, blank with shock, eyes flickering from Porter to Hugo and back, mouth a slack line. 

Hugo lifts his shirt and Porter’s a little drunk and the light is so dim but he can see the way that his vines are now climbing Anton’s Celtic knots like a trellis. A beautiful, complicated dark piece right over Hugo’s heart and it contrasts to the glow of Porter’s flowers like it completes them. 

“Ah, merci,” Hugo says and he’s smiling so broadly. 

The marks look right. It looks like they were meant to be this way. 

Porter has no sink to cling to and so he goes to his knees. Hits the floor, catches himself on numb palms and pants. He can’t breathe, and he wonders distantly what’s happening to him. His lungs are hauling, clawing for oxygen, and none of it is coming through. He’s dizzy and his vision is a scratchy tunnel-

Hugo’s hand lands on his shoulder. He’s dimly aware Hugo’s on his knees beside him, that Anton’s crouched a foot or so away. Hovering, respecting Porter’s space even now. He’s staring though. Porter can feel it on his skin. 

“It’s alright,” Hugo murmurs, is murmuring, Porter doesn’t know how long he’s been talking. He can barely listen. He thinks he’s having a panic attack. “Cher, it’s okay.” 

Porter lets himself be lifted into Hugo’s arms, lets his face be guided to the crook of Hugo’s neck. It’s safe there, some animal part of him knows. Hugo loves him. Hugo won’t let anything hurt him. The panic recedes a little. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Hugo murmurs and Porter shudders, nods and hauls himself back upright to look at Anton. 

He’s watching them, on his knees a few feet away. He looks-

He looks sad. His hand is pressed to his chest, fingers knotted in his shirt. 

“Porter,” he tries. Porter stares and Anton crawls a little closer. He doesn’t reach out. 

Porter’s grateful. 

“Let’s go somewhere else,” he says, mouth numb. He’s babbling. It’s only Hugo’s arm around him that’s kept him from bolting. “Somewhere private.”

\--

The hotel is too hot.

The air is close and too much on his skin. He hates it, hates Hugo’s hand on his hip keeping him still. He wants to run. He doesn’t want to look at either of them. Doesn’t want to remember how his vines had looked tangled with Anton’s knotwork. He doesn’t want to know what Hugo’s mark is going to look like on Anton’s skin, where it’ll be. It’s not on his hands or his face but there’s so many places and- 

It could be on Anton’s _chest_ , Porter thinks, and then swallows against the wave of nausea and jealousy. 

So fitting, he thinks bitterly, that he’d have something he’d never dreamed he’d get only for this to happen. He doesn’t know what Hugo’s trying to do. 

“This way,” Hugo says and leads them down the hallway. They’re going to their room, Porter realizes dully. He still doesn’t understand what Hugo’s trying to accomplish. 

Anton is careful going through the door. He’s not touching Hugo, not even now, and Porter doesn’t understand it. They’re soulmates and there’s nothing Porter can do about that, nothing he can do but swallow down his aching envy and cling to the fact that at least Hugo loves him. At least he has that much. 

But Anton gives them both a wide berth, settles on the edge of the bed feet away from both of them, and Hugo hasn’t stepped away from Porter’s side. 

They’re silent when the door shuts, the lock clicking into place automatically. Quiet for a long time, just watching each other in the dimness of the room. 

Anton stands and Porter flinches. Anton doesn’t notice, he’s too busy pulling his shirt over his head and Porter knows what he’s trying to do, wants to reach out and yank the fabric back into place so he doesn’t have to see-

Hugo’s feathers are a tight, beautiful spiral around Anton’s heart. 

He expects the jealousy to be bitter. He expects it to rise up in him like it always has at the thought of Anton in anyone’s mark but his, the thought of someone else owning the part of him that’s most intimate. He’s always wanted his own mark growing over Anton’s heart. It’s always stopped him, knowing it wouldn’t be there. 

It’s nothing like that. There’s only the slightly hurting desire to touch. To lay his hand over where Hugo’s marked Anton as his. As each other’s. 

“You’ve been hiding things,” Hugo jokes and his tone is so easy it makes Porter want to scream. Anton grins sheepishly. 

“As have you,” he points out and Porter can’t handle this, he can’t deal with how easy things are. He can’t process it, doesn’t _want_ to process it. He wants everything to be as it was before, when it was him and Hugo, or before that when he was alone and clean and scared but not scared like this. Not scared of losing… 

He’s scared of losing both of them, he realizes dimly. 

He realizes he’s on the floor again. The hotel carpet is rough under his knees. Hugo’s arm is around him. It’s starting to feel a little familiar. 

“Minou,” Hugo murmurs and he’s so infinitely gentle. “It’s alright. You can have this.” 

Porter hauls in something that’s trying to be a laugh. It comes out bitter and unpleasant and he thinks it sort of fits. 

Anton shuffles forward on his knees. He’s watching them both anxiously and he’s still shirtless and Porter can’t look away from Hugo’s mark on him. It’s beautiful against golden skin. Anton’s so beautiful. 

“Porter,” he says. Porter stares at him. He stretches out a hand. 

Porter stares at it for a long time. 

“You don’t have to,” Hugo murmurs at last. Anton doesn’t move. He’s staring at Porter and his hand is still outstretched. “But you want this.” 

Porter flinches, just a little bit. Waits for Anton’s expression to change. Waits for the dawn of realization, the discomfort. It doesn’t come. 

Anton’s still waiting. His hand is wavering a bit in the air with the effort of keeping it lifted in the space between them. 

Porter reaches out and their hands are hovering over each other for a long moment. It’s agonizing and so the moment their skin brushes is almost a relief except for every way it isn’t and Anton’s gasping and Porter can’t look away from the marks on Anton’s chest. 

The feathers are woven through vines now. Familiar, so familiar, and for a long moment he doesn’t understand why. 

Anton lets go of his hand so easily and the noise he makes when Porter’s fingertips brush against his chest is tiny. 

“I told you so,” murmurs Hugo and it’s only a little smug. Porter bites his lip against a smile.

“Hugo,” Anton says, absent admonishment, his voice is a thread. 

It’s a little difficult to see with the way his eyes are going blurry with happy tears but Porter’s pretty sure the flowers under his fingertips are morning glories.


End file.
